


Long Live America

by WerewolvesAreReal



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Man Out of Time, character piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They ask him, do you ever miss it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Live America

They ask him, _do you ever miss it?_

It's a silly question. Reporters laugh to themselves when they ask. Not loudly, no, but they laugh in their bemused smiles and ironic head tilts. They expect him to say 'yes', dutiful, obligated, but they also expect 'not much', and they expect him to love, love, love the modern world.

The modern world has computers and cell phones, where people can see across the globe and speak to loved ones across continents. It has bright-colored screens and fast-moving cars flashing across New York in a whirlwind of color and movement. There's equality laws about women, different ethnicities, religious freedom, gay rights. They say _culture shock_ to his face, but what they mean is, _your world is dead. Obsolete._ They mean _you're an antique, a vestige of a time we've risen above._ They mean _tell us how better this is, how wiser we are than in the past, how we've risen above hatred and poverty and despair._ They mean _tell us our future will be amazing, too._

And Steve smiles, because it's all familiar. He knows this, the repetition of consoling and assuring. They look for a smile, and he gives them a smile, and he gives them confident answers mixed with moments of bashfulness, because they like that. He says “Well, gee,” even though he's been in the army in a combat zone and can swear hard enough to make Nazis blush. He says “I miss the folks I knew,” because this is acceptable, but he doesn't talk about those folks or the aged husks of old comrades still breathing wearily into ventilators somewhere, because that is not. He says “These new computers are amazing,” and doesn't say they're also unnecessary, and loud, and distracting, and also kind of terrifying when you know Tony Stark and understand the full power of electronics.

One reporter asks if he misses Brooklyn. Steve smiles at him, too, and just says, “Brooklyn is still here, and anywhere in America is home.” And it's no more a lie than saying he's punched Hitler, but the lie hurts this time. Because the reporters are nodding, because Captain America is patriotic and loves his country however, _when_ ever it is. But Steve Rogers is not always Captain America, and Steve Rogers misses old Brooklyn with its familiar sounds and textures, the chipped paint of the deli down the road and the noisy, fog-belching rumble of Ford station wagons.

_Do you have hobbies,_ they want to know, because reporters these days want to know everything, and the media is so quick there is never enough information. So Steve talks about drawing, and art, and not about how he used to visit war museums and memorials and now he can't, because he goes to museums and sees his own eternal face next to pictures of the dead.

_Do you ever miss it,_ they ask. That's the question they never stop asking, but they don't want the answer. They want Captain America, quiet humbleness and boy-next-door smiles. They want to hear him talk about faith and honor and apple pie, the American dream, rising above difficulty and meeting success. They don't want to know about skeletons and blood under nails and the crackle of frozen ice in his dreams. They don't _need_ to know this. Steve Rogers is Captain America, but Captain America is not Steve Rogers. And Steve Rogers is just a asthmatic boy from a lost era, relegated to the annals of history already combed over and judged with the full superiority of modern morals. America is dead, long live America.

They ask him _do you ever miss it_ and Captain America says, “not very much, ma'am.”


End file.
